The Biggest Tech Trends at CES 2023, According to Marketers

Against a backdrop of tightening budgets and Silicon Valley in financial flux, marketers sought out technology that would help grow bottom lines in the near term at the tech industry’s annual premiere event.

The Consumer Electronics Show, or CES, drew about 115,000 industry attendees to Las Vegas last week in the conference’s first full-scale return since 2020, including big delegations from brands, agencies and media platforms with any kind of tech bent.

Retail media networks seemed to dominate the advertising portion of the show, while devices and software enabling augmented reality (AR) proved a tangible alternative to the ebbing metaverse hype. And recent advances in artificial intelligence and emerging trends like social commerce were never far from anybody’s mind in the brand world.

“It’s actually an exciting show because there has been movement in technology—it’s been three years since most of us have been here,” said Dana Bhargava, head of experience planning and media at Sanofi Consumer Health.

Retail media networks

With big activations from Amazon Ads and Walmart Connect, retail media was inescapable in the C-Space—the advertising and media floor of CES. The trend has gained momentum in the last year as more retailers joined the fray with no signs of slowing down in 2023.

One question on the minds of many marketers at the show was how industry trade groups will standardize metrics across this burgeoning new medium, which the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) is in the process of determining.

One thing that’s emerging is the next evolution of social.

Emily Ketchen, Lenovo

“Without fail, without question, retail media has been the IAB’s fastest growing area in 2022,” said IAB CEO David Cohen at the event. “Right now there is no standard foundation, but that’s kicking off in earnest this year.”

Augmented reality

As hype around the metaverse cools, marketers are turning their attention to another type of digital reality that has more practical and tangible uses in the near term: AR.

With big tech companies like Apple and Meta readying and releasing new mixed reality headsets, and software developer kits and social platforms making this technology more accessible than ever, brands are continuing to look for new ways to tap AR and boost consumer engagement. Current uses range from virtual try-on tech—especially in cosmetics and accessories—to games that can add buzz to an entertainment franchise to in-person spectacles that enhance physical activations.

“Augmented reality is something which is going to be hugely enabling marketers to be able to communicate and engage with their consumers and prospects in extremely different and unique ways,” Mastercard chief marketing and communications officer Raja Rajamannar told Adweek at the show.

Artificial intelligence

It was hard to have a conversation with anybody at CES without the subject eventually wandering to speculation about research group OpenAI’s text generator ChatGPT and its impact. While too recently released to have spawned products or startups on the show floor, plenty of conversation grappled with the potential effects that generative AI—like ChatGPT and fast-advancing image and video technology—could have on the advertising and media industries.

Meanwhile, more conventional uses of AI for predictive analytics and anonymized personalization also commanded marketers’ attention, especially with consumer privacy and the end of cookies serving as an ever-present backdrop.

“The ability to mine data from AI is going to just allow you to understand far more about what people are thinking,” said Bhargava. “Yeah, you can see people’s behavior, but you don’t know what people are thinking, and that’s going to change with AI.”

Social commerce

Like many ecommerce trends that are only just emerging in the United States, social shopping has become commonplace in Asian markets but has yet to have much big impact on stateside buying habits.

Emily Ketchen, CMO of the Intelligent Devices Group at Lenovo, whose dual headquarters are located in North Carolina and Hong Kong, thinks that 2023 could be the year this trend finally reaches U.S. shores as marketing on social platforms moves into a new era with the growing creator economy.

“One thing that’s emerging is the next evolution of social,” Ketchen told Adweek at CES. “CMOs need to be thinking about how are you selling on social, not just participating.”